Plot Trysts

Meg and Alex are joined by Olivia Waite to discuss this entry in the Vorkosigan saga. Is there a more fun way to represent issues of a fractious identity than clones?

Katherine Grant always impresses us with the diversity of experiences she puts in her romances. Both of us enjoyed reading this! Meg had a lot of thoughts on Persuasion and was into it, Laine thought the reality was a little TOO real to be sexy.

We are officially Sarah MacLean completionists with this book. We are NOT fans of this couple, but it was very fun to see how far MacLean has come.

This is a very promising debut, especially on the hot tamale scale. We just couldn't get over the hero's lack of conviction and making out with her cousin.

Meg and Alex are joined by Katherine Addison, author of the Goblin Emperor, to discuss Cetaganda. For a romp, there's quite a bit of social and political commentary.

Is this the biggest disagreement ever on plot trysts?

The title is meant to be Not!Jeopardy reference, but even though we loved this book all I can think is "baby don't hurt me."

We (reasonably IMO) expected a sex book. This was NOT a sex book.

We interrupt your usual Naismith/Vorkosigan family hijinks to explore some speculative, old-school SciFi. What if a planet inhabited only by men ran out of ova? One intrepid scientist must even *gasp* speak to a woman to find a solution!

This is a bite-sized good time, even if neither of us can articulate more than "it was fun and we figured out the mystery too soon so there should have been more sex."

This book really takes some chances and explored new-to-us things in Romance. We liked it overall, but if we're being honest Thorne's way of... taking control... is what really sold us here.

I think this is the closest we've ever come to grading on a curve. Is this good? No? Did it have potential that Sarah MacLean later realized. YES.

Max Gladstone joins Meg and Alex for a deep dive into three novellas. Buckle up!
Start - Mountains of Mourning;
25 Minutes - Labyrinth;
65 Minutes - Borders of Infinity.

This book is neither hinged nor unhinged. It was fun, but we like the extremes.

This novella is a perfect standalone, and you should read it. However, it is the last book in a series, which made us sad, even though we wouldn't change anything about this book.

If you haven't yet, go sign up for Alexandra Vasti's newsletter. You get free gems like this seriously perfect novella. A plot AND sex scenes? Sign us up.

Meg and Alex are joined by R.E. Stearns to discuss the next book in Miles' coming of age journey. Given the social status of the main characters in this series, the social and political dynamics of being powerful and isolated are a focus of conversation.

If you criticize Sunny, Meg will fight you. Just an FYI.

Ali Hazelwood breaks away from science contemporary into paranormal romance. A lot of her go-to tropes really worked for us here! Laine got a crash course in werewolf sub tropes that broke her.

Meg and Alex are joined by Lynn Buchanan to introduce the Miles-focused part of the series. So many characters get new framing from Miles's perspective that the discussion focuses a lot on character study.

This was a really tough one for us. On the one hand, West and Sophie have great banter and a series worth of feelings to work through. On the other hand, West is perfect and Sophie is very unforgivably mean to him.

Verify finally figured out who her phantom is! And he's hot! But he's also busy saving England. Is this book great? No. Is it the best in the series? Yes.

College sweethearts go on tour when one of them gets super famous writing about the breakup. Excellent concept, we were iffy on some of the execution but had fun!

Meg and Alex are joined by Aliette de Bodard for an in-depth discussion of Barrayar. Long live Cordelia.

This modern take on Dangerous liaisons charmed both of us. Who knew hide and seek could be so sexy?

We bought this one completely, from the conflict to the love story. Maybe the ending was unbelievably sweet, but that's a good thing.

This book is fun and charming and cute. However, be prepared that (for a book about a sex bet) it's very tame.

Meg is joined by Alexandra Vasti for a new limited series in which they will dive into the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold with a new guest host each week. This week, Elizabeth Everett joins them to discuss the foundation of the Vorkosigan series, Shards of Honor. How much did the cold war impact this book? How sexy are experienced heroes? Is this a Romance?

We really loved the unapologetic incorporation of a sexually active heroine, and if anyone knows anything about those pearls, hit us up.

Look, this was an adorable book with a fun concept but the official rating is G.

Hypothetically a virgin widow crime fighter getting with the heir is a plot we can get behind. The specifics of this one, however, left something to be desired for us.

We kick off the new year with an adorable and sexy novella that understands sometimes you just need two hot people and weather-related forced proximity.

Parts of this book are very fun and then a major spoiler/twist happens and we stopped having any fun at all, but the main characters weren't having any fun either. Meg is still personally victimized by chess.

Meg and Laine agree that this book does its thing very well and that there is significantly more attention paid to one character's development. We disagree about whether or not that makes for an enjoyable read.

Stephanie Laurens doesn't know how to write less than 300 pages and even when there's nary a whiff of plot to be found, we can't spend less than 40 minutes talking about it.

The good: well executed, sexy, and a total breath of fresh air. The Laine has notes: It is December and there was nary a Christmas carol to be found.

This is a novella about a Christmas sex cabin. It was so good, but we struggled to stay on topic when discussing

If you can deeply internalize the expectation that this will be very short and closed door, everything in this novella is perfect. If you hear the words "virgin hero" and start salivating, that's kinda hard to do.

Add this to the list of books we didn't think would work for us, but totally did! Everything that's usually annoying to us was charming. Maybe that's the meaning of Christmas?

A boy band member trying to rehabilitate his image with a Christmas movie is shocked but not appalled when his new costar is his favorite porn star. Meg loved it, Laine liked it, and it was VERY Christmas.

This cute newsletter novella scratched Laine's Christmas itch, but Meg struggled with some hamfisted Christmas hijinks. We both enjoyed the sex vacation.

We wanted to like this "rival archeologist" book very much, but the male main character is nothing like Lord Ingram or Rupert, so we struggled.

This episode went a little off the rails. We remain charmed by glimmer falls and enjoyed this new twist on an amnesia romance.

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy our unhinged outtakes and random discussions.

We really struggled to review this book! It was really fun and really sexy, but the characters were inconsistent and the plot was hard to follow. We both really enjoyed reading it, but sound like we didn't when talking about it.

Laine found this to be the perfect balance of zany and sincere. Meg had trouble suspending disbelief. Laine 's started a countdown to Christmas.

The perfect newsletter novella makes you want to read more by the author, and this achieves this in spades. It doesn't reinvent "falling for the wrong brother" in exactly the right way, and the heroine manages to be believably young but also not the worst.

Meg felt many things while reading this book, including devastation that the important scientific work of so many women was lost to history. Laine thought it was super sexy and fun. YMMV.

Moral of the story: all half-Scottish people are queer